The author group book promotion factor

A lot of authors have gotten on board with author groups and local or regional author and writer associations, but a vast majority of you still haven’t.

Not only do these groups provide great book promotion resources, including events where you get access to book promotion and publishing professionals, they’re also an excellent opportunity to network with authors that are on your same level.

Author and writing groups also provide a challenge in a supportive environment. You’ll notice your writing deadlines get easier to meet.

You’ll also find you have a captive audience to discuss concepts and storylines that may be really new and fresh, and possibly scary to present to your audience.

Last but not least, your writing will improve. Listening to what others are doing and sharing your milestones and getting candid feedback are really excellent tools for taking your writing to the next level while also ensuring you’re following themes and concepts your genre is really into at the moment.

The mentor factor

Too few authors have writing mentors. I think it’s a combination of a lot of factors. Sometimes it’s an ego thing, sometimes people are too shy to ask, and a lot of times I think authors just don’t know how to go about finding one!

Writing mentors are ideally authors in your genre that are a few steps up the ladder from you. Not so far that they’ve lost that detailed insight into where you’re at, but not so close that it turns into more of a mini author group versus a true mentorship.

Writing mentors are also great resources for book promotion ideas. If they’ve seen more successes than you have, I can assure you they’ve made some smart decisions and they’ve figured out what works for them – and what works in your genre.

Book promotion is a broad term that includes a lot of strategies that work across multiple genres, but it’s finessing those strategies to your specific reader market that make your efforts successful. This is where a lot of authors fall short.

They read about book promotion strategies and just follow the steps blindly without taking details into consideration that can make or break your success.

Details like long-standing genre preferences, new themes and concepts that are starting to show up in bestsellers, how fans of your genre like to be reached (are they engaging more with their favorite authors on Facebook or Instagram?) and especially key search terms and phrases that really speak to and pull in the people you want reading your books.

A writing mentor has likely figured a lot of these things out. So in addition to helping you elevate your writing, their book promotion experience is also gold.

Well, first you need to figure out what you need to address. Asking any book promotion professional, “How do I sell more books?” isn’t going to go over well. That’s too broad.

If you know you need help with social media, find someone who’s been super successful on social and has a lot of great training programs available.

I personally focus a lot of time on my Amazon research, and understanding how to work the Amazon system, so people struggling with their book promotion on Amazon tend to reach out to me and I love that. More on this further down.

But what if you’re unsure of where you need book promotion help? What if you really just want to know how to sell more books?

There are ways to address broader issues with more specific discussion points. It’s just about knowing where to start the discussion, how to ferret out key areas that affect your bottom line, and figure out how to improve on those.

Some talking points for inspiration

Here are some of my favorite topics for coaching, because I feel they address book promotion issues that are really relevant to most authors:

What are you, the author doing? I love going over this in detail and giving feedback – remember this is a GREAT opportunity to get super candid, don’t be afraid to share what you’re doing, even if you think it’s small (or non-existent).

Most authors don’t know what to blog about and this is a GREAT time to brainstorm ideas.

Let’s talk about what’s getting traction for you on social media and what isn’t, and brainstorm new directions you can test out.

We should discuss your elevator pitch and unique selling points. Most authors think they have this nailed, but usually they don’t.

Your Amazon presence. If you don’t have a few different Amazon packages with us, let’s talk about what YOU need to do better. Because you can send all the traffic to your book page that you want, but if it’s terrible, you won’t convert shoppers to buyers. If you’d like my assessment of your Amazon presence, click here to get started.

Do you have a mentor, author group or book promotion professional experience that really knocked it out of the park? Please share in the comments how it improved your own book promotion!

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